The Wants of Men
by purplebeards
Summary: A sad (long) drabble about Drake post-series 1. Bennet Drake wants for few things material, and that which he does wish for feels so far-off and insurmountable that his own heart discourages him.


"_He's got this brutish, pugnacious energy and yet in his heart he longs to be a different kind of man and to make up for the lost years in the army and never settling down. He's longing for a woman and a family and that kind of nurturing love_." - Jerome Flynn on Sgt. Drake, Interview with The West 22nd July 2013.

* * *

Drake wanted certain things in life, which he tried not to dwell on or think about for the misery it might cause. He wanted for few material things, but rather for feelings and states of being, which were far harder to achieve. You cannot save up your earning to buy the feeling of happiness that he desired.

Friends were rare in Bennet's life. There had been two periods of time in his life when friends were plentiful. When he was a child in Whitechapel, there was a whole gaggle of boys he ran around with, and he considered many of them good friends. A few of them even joined the army when he did, but he didn't see them after that. The second time when Drake felt part of a group of friends was in the military. You live among men for long enough and they become your friends whether you intended it or not. Most of those men died or lost contact with him after the war, until that fateful event some months before. In the end they were not his friends.

Now Bennet had few, if any, real friends. Reid was not his friend but rather his superior. They did not willingly spend time together outside of work. Jackson was certainly not a friend no matter how much he'd warmed to the American. Bennet might have considered young Hobbs a friend but that was a life lost and not to be dwelled on now.

But Rose considered him a dear friend. She'd said so when she explained why she would not marry him, and he knew she valued him as a friend even without her owing her safety to him. Drake, in turn, did consider her a friend too. He cared for her and wished her safe, but valued himself better than to pine for a love never that would never be there. She was not "his Rose", but she was his friend, and he cared for her as such. He could not love her any more, and she could never love him. That was a fact that he had accepted and moved on from.

Miss Bella was a sweet woman who Drake cared for too. She was honest in her promise to keep their night together a secret, and he still had never slept as well as when he held her in his arms in that room at Tenter Street. She had called his name before anyone else's when she was in danger, and Drake had gone on instinct to protect her when faced with a body by her feet. He valued her friendship and company too, and if he were a wealthier man he would employ her company far more often to aid him in a good night's sleep. He could not bring himself to fall for another girl of her profession, and he knew little of Bella to know if he could love her.

But beyond that Bennet wanted far more. He yearned for all the things he read about in married life; the company, the companionship and the regularity of it all. And the more he thought about the life he wanted, the more specific desires came to mind.

He wanted to wake up with someone smiling at him, kissing him good-morning. Someone's weight against his chest, the warmth of their body encased in his arms and their legs tangled with his. He wanted to say 'I love you' and hear it back. Eat three meals a day next to or opposite someone, and tell them how good it tasted while hearing a story about the hassle at the butcher's that morning. He wanted to come home to the house at night and find it warm and lived-in. Wanted to bury his face long locks of hair and feel their owner writhe beneath him, holding tight and crying out because they loved him, not because he'd paid them for their services.

And far less likely to be admitted was that Bennet wanted someone to hold onto him during the night terrors; to grip his hand and wrap an arm around him to make him feel safe and comfortable and tell him "it's alright". He wanted someone to lay their head against his and speak softly of all the wonderful things they could to together while he drifted off into a deep, uninterrupted sleep. He wanted to hold their hand too, through all of their trials in life. He wanted to be sat down with them one night after tea and have symptoms tearfully listed off to him, with worry pooling in the pit of his stomach until it is revealed that such symptoms are those of pregnancy. He wanted to cry with them, this time with joy. Bennet wanted to hold their hand through it all and eventually hold a child, and watch them grow up with perhaps some of his more appealing features (certainly not his nose). Bennet wanted a family and all the ups and downs that came with it.

But now with Bennet's age and his job and income, he was unlikely to find that life. He would wish for no other line of work (not just because he would find any other work difficult), and so could never offer his love to someone without having to justify what he could provide for them. He would never find someone who might understand with as serious concern as he hoped for, the terrors that plagued his mind at night and made the scars on his body burn to this day. He would never find someone who could survive the worry that wracked a policeman's wife. He could never find a woman who could look past his roughness and find a person worth loving underneath.

Bennet was beginning to accept that, but it would never stop hurting. It would never make it easier for him to wake in the night in a cold sweat; it would never make the cold of his home any easier to tolerate when he arrived after work and it would never make the empty bed he went to each evening any more comfortable.

Drake had long lived the life of a bachelor and whilst resigned to die that way, it did not stop him aching for a life he could have had instead.


End file.
